School encourages the imagination.
They walk us over to the museum.
In paintings, naked women comb their hair, backs hunched,
In a yellow room. The subject is recurrent.
Hips warm the fields, the sunflowers
turn their breath in spades towards the blue, the eye of lust.
The heavens are chockablock with heavy golden frames.

The clamshell turns and whispers, slightly gasping,
“Do I die when I cannot sleep?”
Sometimes a circular saw kicks in,
and I think of a blade that slashes quickly and deeply.
Someone says “Hush!” and the clamshell wraps it up,
“I haven’t got anything else. Cheers.”

We go to the museum store, and I look for a wall poster.
The clamshell’s fingers are sweaty onion stalks,
and her neck extends higher each instant.
The trees and forests are mere beanstalks, she stretches so high.
I think of a blade that slashes so quickly and deeply
everyone else would feel indifferent at that moment.
Nor do I find a poster there. Only later,
after years of its being ready.